Whatever newness materializes on the runways of the men’s and haute couture collections over the next 10 days, no name on the calendar will come anywhere near the unbridled designs from the Bachelor of Arts graduating year students of the Institut Français de la Mode.
“There is a sense of great freshness, and in this heavy world today, I think this show plays out like a kind of parenthesis of joy, of happiness,” said the school’s dean, Xavier Romatet, as guests entered the campus building’s covered terrace overlooking the Seine at the eastern edge of Paris. “It shows how fashion is here to bring pleasure to those who create it, those who watch it, and those who wear it.”
The IFM Bachelor of Arts show differs from the Masters of Arts in Fashion and Knitwear catwalk that took place in March, most obviously because the students are at a point on their design journey where concept and artistic experimentation count as much, if not more, than technique.
Today’s extravaganza shone a spotlight on 31 students among the 70 who are in their final year. Selected by a jury, they each presented six looks; beyond developing a theme, they had total carte blanche. And whether flying an extra-large freak flag, envisioning garments for a dystopian blockbuster, or pushing the wearable possibilities of unwearable materials, this cohort proved especially gutsy.
They left it all on the runway: the kitsch (Katherine Zhi Wen Chen) and the kink (Paco Fausset Leroy-Thomas); the surrealist nods (Hyeonseo Yoo) and the special effects (Zoé Lübken). There were garments with extra body parts (Théophane Sorin, Alexander Lacqua); and garments that restricted body parts (Alessio Rubin Pedrazzo, Emanuel Simmerle). There was a twisted take on Parisian haute couture (Noah Almonte) and an Americana rodeo series on par with Pharrell’s Fall LV collection (Anthony Iacones). Two designers recontextualized the codes of their home countries–Valentin Prinz from Germany and Franck Wadji from the Ivory Coast–with impressive skill and originality. And Antonin Vogel’s workmanship with window blinds recalled how Paco Rabanne pioneered the transformation of metal scraps into high fashion. If deconstruction was the leading trend, fetish came a close second (like a rite of passage for artists at this age).
“I always say, at the end, you will work in fashion; so you need to know how to make a jacket or trench coat. Then within this frame, you can do whatever you want,” said Thierry Rondenet, who oversees the program with Hervé Yvrenogeau.
In these times of student unrest and pro-Palestine encampments on campuses around the world, any number of the collections could have veered overtly political and possibly contentious. Instead, as the designers emerged for the finale, each walked with one of their models while wearing a unified message: “Ceasefire Now” stamped in black on their own white shirts. The impact was emphatic without taking away from their pursuit of pure creation.
